The uncrewed Roscosmos Progress 82 cargo spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the Worldwide Area Station’s Poisk module at 9:26 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 17.
Following undocking, Expedition 68 cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will ship instructions from the station’s Roscosmos section to rotate the Progress for added visible inspections and documentation of the final space the place a coolant leak was found on Feb. 11. Loaded with trash, Progress will probably be deorbited by Roscosmos flight controllers over the Pacific Ocean after spending 4 months on the area station.
In the meantime, the crew members continued an area adaptation examine right this moment whereas conducting a mess of upkeep duties aboard the orbital outpost right this moment. The station residents additionally labored on extra human analysis, watered crops, and cargo transfers.
As a result of lack of an up-and-down reference in weightlessness researchers are investigating how an astronaut’s eye-hand coordination reacts to audible and visible stimuli. Flight Engineers Josh Cassada of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) as soon as once more subjected themselves to the human analysis investigation going down contained in the Columbus laboratory module. The pair took turns strapping themselves in a specialised chair, sporting a digital actuality headset, and performing computerized duties to check their attain and grasp features. Observations might assist docs perceive how the mind adjusts to microgravity and deal with stability problems on Earth.
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Frank Rubio targeted their day primarily on lab upkeep and train actions. Mann started her day with orbital plumbing duties in Tranquility module, earlier than watering tomato crops in Veggie area botany facility, and at last reorganizing cargo area within the Concord module. Rubio cleaned home windows within the cupola, the station’s “window to the world,” then checked out moveable respiration gear that measures an astronaut’s cardio capability when pedaling on the station’s train cycle.
Cosmonauts Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Anna Kikina educated to make use of the decrease physique destructive stress go well with and examined its skill to offset the consequences of microgravity on the human physique. The Roscosmos duo additionally labored on water transfers and cargo operations contained in the ISS Progress 83 resupply ship. Petelin changed life assist elements contained in the Zvezda service module then studied on a pc how future pilots would possibly management a spacecraft or a robotic on planetary missions.
Be taught extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, in addition to the ISS Fb and ISS Instagram accounts.
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